Gideon Horvath, Adam Šakovy
Phantom Matter
Curated by Michal Stolárik
25.9. - 31.10. 2025 VUNU Bratislava
The exhibition Phantom Matter approaches the body as a physical material, a symbolic element, and direct agent of the narrative. Through physicality, it explores the inherent tension between existence and absence, reflects on stability and fragility, and juxtaposes mythical eternity with romantic ephemerality. It invites a haptic encounter, carries scents, conveys a fleeting touch or a passionate embrace. It is at once cold and warm, soft and hard, moist and dry.
The joint exhibition by Gideon Horváth and Adam Šakový explores the paradox of the present and the absent, of the depicted and the intuited, while questioning the established certainties of the physical world. By way of the material qualities and figural scenes, it recounts unspoken desires, distant memories, as well as sensuality, tension, stigma, shame, and sin. First-time pairing of their works brings together a contrast of materials, forms, themes, and media – wax meets metal, body meets stone, nature meets humanity, realism meets fiction, and painting meets installation. Both artists demonstrate a keen sensitivity to history and art history, employing mythological references updated through personal experience. The exhibition project creates a space where irrational relations, the boundaries between reality and fiction, or past and present intertwine.
Gideon Horváth, Amphora of Vindictus, 2024
beeswax, porcelain, steel / 150 x 30 x 25 cmGideon Horváth
(b. 1990, lives in Budapest) is a Hungarian interdisciplinary artist who primarily creates sculptures and spatial installations. He works with beeswax, porcelain, and iron, emphasizing both their material qualities and symbolic dimensions. For Horváth, wax— secreted by the glands of bees—is a personal and sensual substance that forges
an intimate bond between himself and nature.
Through his works, he explores the relationship between corporeality, the stigmatization of minorities, and shame, drawing on myths and queer theory. In the selected works, he fragmentarily alludes to the figures of Faunus and Mercury—direct references to classical mythology, which he updates with his own sensitivity and personal experience. A free-standing object resembling an ancient amphora depicts a hybrid bird-human figure, whose intricate porcelain details communicates beauty, repulsion, vulnerability, and vengeance.
Gideon Horváth, Unsung Tales III., 2024
beeswax, porcelain, aluminum
/ 80 x 30 x 15 cmGideon Horváth, Gargoyle II., 2022
30 x 30 x 10 cm
beeswax, metal, wood, varnish
Gideon Horváth, Overripe fruits, 2023
bronze, steel, aluminium, beeswax / 220 x 150 x 110 cm each
The central installation, Overripe Fruits, has been inspired by childhood memories of
a garden full of apricots, which were perfect only for a fleeting moment. The overripe fruit not only symbolizes the personal experience of a guilty pleasure, but also communicates a broader context of unrecognized and suppressed love.
Adam Šakový, Stones 07, 2020
oil and acrylic on canvas
150 x 190 cm
Adam Šakový
(b. 1987, lives in Bratislava) is a Slovak visual artists who focuses on figurative painting, updated through post-conceptual thinking and subtle alterations and disruptions to images. His works explore the relationship between tradition and contemporaneity, using symbols and metaphors that he transforms with
a distinctive eye for detail and a realist auteur language. At the exhibition,
he presents a selection from his earlier series Stones, complemented by a new triptych.
Adam Šakový, Stones 05, 2020
oil and acrylic on canvas
190 x 150 cm
The featured figural compositions quote iconic sculptural works, which Šakový transforms through strategic selection, composition, and painterly interpretation. Although immobile and material, the sculptures and figures in his paintings are depicted as living organisms. We observe their relational connections—whether whole figures or body fragments, coming alive in tense situations, passionate conflicts, or sensual poses. Uprooted from their historical context, they serve as commentaries on human interactions.
Adam Šakový, Stones 39-41, 2025
oil on canvas
/ 93 x 60 cm (each)The artist’s key strategy is the visual imitation of materials and physical phenomena. Marble slabs or levitating objects appear with realistic shadows that alter their nature and spatial properties. The stones and their raw painterly textures emerge as the central motive, existing functionally on the brink between object and illusion.
Adam Šakový, Stones 43, 2020
acrylic on canvas
30 x 20 cm
Inquire about available works